NYT columnist David Carr dead at 58

DAVID Carr, a New York Times media critic who was known for sharp wit and blunt style and overcame drug addiction to become one of America’s most respected journalists, died Thursday at age 58.

Carr collapsed in the newsroom Thursday and was later pronounced dead at a hospital, the Times said.

Earlier in the evening, Carr had moderated a media panel discussion that featured Edward Snowden and others and centered on the NSA surveillance scandal last year. The cause of death was not immediately given.

Times executive editor Dean Baquet broke the news in a message to employees, the newspaper said.

“He was the finest media reporter of his generation, a remarkable and funny man who was one of the leaders of our newsroom,” Baquet wrote.

“He was our biggest champion, and his unending passion for journalism and for the truth will be missed by his family at The Times, by his readers around the world, and by people who love journalism,” Baquet added.

Carr joined the Times in 2002, first writing about the magazine publishing industry.

Most recently he was known for a weekly column called The Media Equation, which analyzed the news, events in the publishing industry, television and social media.

In 2008 Carr published a deeply personal memoir about his battles with addiction, which he ultimately overcame.

The book features an account of a night not long after the birth of his twin daughters in which Carr left them in a car while he went into a drug den to buy cocaine.

“Sitting there in the gloom of the front seat, the car making settling noises against the chill, I decided that my teeny twin girls would be safe, that God would look after them while I did not,” Carr wrote, according to the Times.

Once clean, Carr wrote of himself, “Today I am a genuine, often pleasant person, I do solid work for a reputable organization and have, over the breadth of time, proved to be an attentive father and husband.”